O it’s official. I have submitted the Notice of Submission form, which currently indicates that I should submit my thesis strictly on schedule, i.e. at the end of September. A final draft is due by the end of August, so I will bury myself to comply with the schedule. I have no clear plans for the period that extends beyond September, but I will definitely take a vacation. I probably need one, but I always have my doubts, based on experience.

On the down side of things, my submission to the British Machine Vision Conference was rejected yesterday. Ho hum. The paper outlined a method for evaluating model such as the one shown below.

Appearance model of the brain, ±2.5 standards deviations shown

An example of less innovative KDE themes: Baghira Mac OS X lookalike

ESTERDAY I took a quick tour through some mockups and proposal made for the KDE project. I would like to present three examples, which are merely screenshots, sometimes combined with art work.

• Navigation Bar Reloaded
• Korganizer better integration
• KBFX 0.5 (One of the mockups)

As these ideas were contributed and voted on by the community of users, no doubt KDE will remain at the forefront of functionality and user experience. It’s a case of programmers preparing and eating their own dogfood, so to speak.

The almighty Stephen Hawking has made a bold and inspiring statement:

“The survival of the human race depends on its ability to find new homes elsewhere in the universe because there’s an increasing risk that a disaster will destroy the Earth, world-renowned scientist Stephen Hawking said Tuesday.”

In my humble opinion, many of the problems envisioned (sudden global warming, nuclear war, or a genetically engineered virus) can be addressed by controlling the size of the population, using birth control. The planet’s overcongestion leads to larger industries that are too morbid for a healthy, long-term existence.

Will society ultimately implode? Or will things escalate into a worst case scenario, as in this apocalyptic prediction? We shall live and find out.

Click to enlarge the image

OOGLE Earth has been released for Linux (see my SUSE screenshot for proof), following the Mac OS X version and preceded by the Windows version.

Let us look further. Google Talk is another example of a similar ‘porting channel’. It began with Windows support, just like most desktop applications from Google. Then, there is Picasa, which was ported to Linux using the Wine layer, with several features disabled. There is a whole variety of applications that began as native Windows programs. This appears to be the trend rather than a mere coincidence. A few days ago, SketchUp from Google was ported to the Mac. No Linux version, as yet.

This simple observation leaves you wondering if Google, a company that is heavily dependent on Open Source software, even owing its success to Linux, perceives Windows (with a userbase majority) as a top priority. Only then come the Mac users, Linux being at the bottom (or top rather) of the pyramid. Considering the fact that Linux is more prevalent than Mac OS X (based on several surveys), it would seem as though Google unfairly favours Mac users while neglecting the loyal Linux users, whose number is underestimated. It is worth emphasising that even Google engineers use Linux (Goobuntu) on their desktops. Don’t they have a say?

The sounds of a high-pitch whisper

F you have a minute to spare, have a look at this on-line high-frequency hearing test. I cannot sense 18,000 Hz, but I’m fine at 17,000.

This test reminds me of yet another test, which I took a long time ago: a geekery test.

Update: In a different test, if I set the volume at maximum, I can hear 21 KHz, so I very much doubt the results of my previous test. At moderate volume levels, I can still cope with 19 KHz and maybe even 20 KHz. I am not sure what the baseline is, so I have not calibrated the volume on my headset.

An Example screenshot from my KDE 3.1 environment. There is
also one from KDE 3.4 (local copy of screenshot)

DMITTEDLY, I am a huge fan of KDE. That said, many other alternatives (choices) do exist and they scale better with older hardware, levels of proficiency, the nature of the work, and taste. This morning I came across a site which provides a succinct overview of merely any desktop environment and window manager. To quote the introductory paragraph:

Welcome to my guide to window managers and desktop environments for The X Window System, as used mainly by Linux and UNIX operating systems. Here you will find descriptions, screenshots and configuration files for all popular window managers, along with related resources, including a news and discussion area.

S time progresses and computer hardware matures, there appears to be a worrisome trend. Backward compatibility, and sometimes practicality and simplicity, are being compromised. Applications get ever more bloated, attempting to be the entire world, and more.

Take, for example, media players that extend infinitely. Some of them turn from simple music players into a fully-blown video player, a Web browser, a music store, a sound mixer, and even an editor or playlist manager that is fairly sophisticated and employs greedy engines. From something small that occupies a megabyte of RAM and does its work reliably, the application can soon devolve into a complex resource pig.

There ought to be support for plug-ins that facilitate lightweight use, but the idea is often discarded, quite unfortunately. This, as a matter of fact, is one of the arguments for backing Open Source development, with healthy user and developer communities. Hooks can accommodate extensions that do not distract maintainers of the core and do not truly detract from its quality (e.g. stability).

For this reason, to use a personal example, I use Thunderbird as what it truly is: a mail client (as well as Horde‘s mail facility for Web-based access tot the accounts). I don’t use Thunderbird for newsgroups and feeds. These are ‘plugs’ for gaps which Thunderbird merely attempts to fill, while retaining simplicity (and thus its lack function). So instead, I use a highly-versatile tool, KNode, which was created and designed to accommodate newsgroups in its entirety. It is designed to deliver the functionality at its best. For feeds, I use a pro-feeds application rather than some off-the-hook ‘application’ or a Web service. Truthfully, I tried alternatives such as Feedlounge, which is Web-based (I was even a project tester briefly), but it was just too slow and it lacked function that I already had in RSSOwl, which I help test as well.